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Of Microsoft Minutes and an ANC Year...

From: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org [A former co-worker of mine, who was a Linux fanatic always spoke derisively about a Microsoft minute . What he referred to were

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, May 4, 2005

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From: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
[A former co-worker of mine, who was a Linux fanatic always spoke
derisively about a "Microsoft minute". What he referred to were Microsoft
install programs which count down and tell you how many minutes or
seconds to go until the install is complete. The program might say: 20
seconds left... and then you end up waiting another 5 minutes. So he used
the term Microsoft minute to denote a lie... a minute which was much
longer than a real minute!!

In a similar vein, I would like to coin my own term: An ANC-Year! By this
I am referring to the sentences criminals in South Africa get. We now
have criminals who get 25, or 100 or 200 year sentences. It sounds
hellishly impressive... but only on a purely superficial level. For
example... nobody lives long enough to serve out a 100 or 200 year
sentence... so much of it is meaningless. Also, adding further to the
superficiality of it all is that sentences can be served simultaneously.
So a criminal who gets 3 x 25 year sentences totalling 75 years in
reality only has a 25 year sentence. Add to that the fact that many can
get parole after 5 years... or for good behaviour. In short, a most
impressive-sounding sentence eventually becomes rather insignificant...
and hence I think we should refer to it as an "ANC-Year". An ANC-Year
might really only amount to a few weeks in "real time".

Whereas Microsoft pretends the time left is less than it really is, the
ANC pretends criminal sentences are much longer than they really are.

Come to think of it... I wonder if an ANC-Year is about as long as a
Microsoft minute??? Maybe its the same thing!?
Jan]

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